If I Were To Say "Analect"

Then Doubtless I Would Also Have To Add -

WASH OUT YOUR DIRTY MINDS! you disgusting perverts.  How often do I need to re-iterate that BOOJUM! is crafted only from the most exquisite SFW materials, and that the single time a naked female bottom graced the blog was when we featured a statue?

     True, we do play hard and fast with nuclear weapons, armoured fighting vehicles and zombies, none of which are unclad or behaving in a saucy manner (we shall ignore the <ahem> 'exotic dancer' zombies at the start of "Zombieland").  Art!

Ambrose Bierce.  The grumpy old man's grumpy old man.

     As you should surely know by now, Ol' Amby is the only candidate Conrad will endorse for President, even at 180 years of age.  We'll come back to this, don't forget.

     So, 'analect' popped up in the purulent psychic protoplasm that makes up my mental mindscape - sorry if you can't un-see that image - earlier today whilst working, rather to my surprise.  Sending out job offers by the dozen is not really conducive to philosophical reflection.  Art!

Do you read Chinese?  Nor do I.

     This is an example of Confucius' writing, collected together by his various devotees and disciples and diarists.  They are attributed both to him and other heavy-duty thinkers around at the time, and are known variously as either "The Analects" or "The Analects Of Confucius".  So, 'analect' is derived from Greek, inevitably, and 'ana' meaning 'up' paired with 'legein', which means 'to gather together', via 'analekta' or 'things collected together', and thence to a collection of philosophical articles all bound up together.  Art!

     There you go, not a smutty word or picture amongst the lot.  Really, you lot ought to get your minds out of the gutter.

   "But but but - where does Pres - I mean, Ambrose Bierce come into this?" I hear you quibble, and - you must be South American quibblers, nobody in this country has ever heard of Ambrose Bierce.

Or they think it's a mis-spelling of this.

     Well, for years and years Old Bitter used to add a few horribly citric and critical word definitions to whatever newspaper column he was writing at the time, for he was a feted and noted journalist.  Eventually, long after he went on an extended holiday in Mexico and forgot to come back, these got collected into "The Devil's Dictionary", which is an hilarious look at South Canadian culture towards the end of the nineteenth century.  You could, in fact, if you were looking to make pun points, describe it as an analecture on South Canadian politics, economics, history and cooking.  Art!

     Well, it made me laugh.  Yes, that is what matters here - whose blog is it, once again?

     Motley!  Let's do a little Combat Cos-play.  You can be Mildred Pierce, armed with an umbrella and a pair of opera glasses, and I'll be Ambrose Bierce, armed with a Colt Navy revolver and a Bowie knife.

How Lemmy Invented The Lighthouse

Well, kind of.  Okay, not kind of.  Okay, okay, he had nothing whatsoever to do with the design, construction, staffing or maintenance of lighthouses.  Happy now?  Happy that you've killed the mystery before it began?  Bah!

     You may not know that Lemmy, pre-Hawkwind days, was a member of a band called <ahem> the Rockin' Vickers.

     That's them.  I am maliciously keeping the image small so you have as much trouble as possible in identifying him.  Heh*.

     And then we transition abruptly to the Bishop Rock lighthouse, which would be sufficient of a connection to make you groan despairingly.  Vickers?  Bishops?  Rock?     Art!

     This basalt behemoth sits on a tiny rock island in the Atlantic ocean, miles from the Scilly Isles, which are themselves miles from the British mainland.  It was one of the most disliked posting for lighthouse keepers, because of the isolation, the horrid weather and waves, and the likelihood of not getting relieved after your two month stint of duty was up.  It receives the full force of Atlantic storms and waves, which have to be seen to be believed.  Art!

Getting washed nice and clean

     The lighthouse was rebuilt in the later nineteenth century, increasing it's mass to six thousand tons, and it still shook - or rocked, in our context - when the big waves came in.  Despite that, it has stood intact since construction and the only occupants are occasional engineers or mechanics from Trinity House who maintain the automated systems.  What we need is a picture that gives a sense of scale - Art!

     The exceedingly risky process of using a bosun's chair to swap keepers and load supplies.  If the seas were bad, this couldn't take place, frequently for weeks at a time.  Even today, bad weather can stop helicopters from landing.

     I think that's enough serious shizzle.  Time for some light and frothy nonsense with LITHIUM WAFER BATT - perhaps not.  I am determined NOT to resort to frothing at the mouth and hammering my keyboard so hard the plastic splits and the keys come loose - also known as Codeword compilation complaints, so let us instead venture forth into <thinks>

CANAL DEFENCE LIGHTS!

     There, doesn't that make your heart beat faster?  A carbon-arc filament light designed and intended to dazzle and blind the Teutons during night attacks, and not intended to defend canals at all, because Perfidious Albion, haha!  Housed in a tank for safe-keeping, since carbon-arcs are delicate and don't take well to bombs and shells.  Art!

     An artists impression, since photographs are hard to come by.  Photographers not keen on standing next to a piercingly incandescent light source, "because of the contrast" and not, of course, "because I might get killed".

     There you go, that's the 'tanks' part of our remit.

Finally -

Have we actually gone into atom bombs in any detail recently?  Possibly not, so we may have to revisit the topic.  I mention this because the BBC only today mentioned a Cold War confrontation that I'd not heard of before, waaaaay back in 1958 (before I was created in a lab, so I have an excuse), between the South Canadians and the Populous Dictatorship, over Taiwan.  The South Canadians were backing Taiwan, and the Populous Dictatorship wanted to get their hot sweaty paws on it; cue worried briefings from the top strategists at the Pentagon that they might have to go nuclear if the Pops tried an amphibious invasion.

     Of course the Pops never tried, mostly because their ability to conduct amphibious warfare in 1958 was about 5% of nothing at all.

     Hmmmm.  As for today?  We may come back to this.

Lacking only buckets and spades

     

     And with that, Vulnavia, we are ever so done.

*  I know, aren't I a swine!

The Past Is Another Country

They Say Strange Shizzle There

Yesterday we examined, briefly, the effort that goes into making BOOJUM! and how this has created an audience over the years.  We also, a little maliciously, pointed out how "Dee Tee" had given up on his blog after only a month, and that the whole thing had abruptly vanished.  No archives.  If Conrad's past posts had vanished through anything less than Global Thermonuclear Warfare you can bet he'd be looking for blood.  Or whatever substitute you use.

CAUTION!  May cause voles to explode.

     So, whilst posting up the links to a long line of prehistory, Conrad happened to commit the cardinal sin - is there an ordinal sin as a complement? - of reading an old post, and he came across - well - Art!

     "Naked Weasel Juggling"?  This is a slightly ambiguous title, as you should so surely see.  Are the weasels naked and doing the juggling themselves?  Are cruel and inhumane humans standing there entirely nude and juggling poor innocent weasels?

     Here an aside.  Throwing a weasel up into the air repeatedly is guaranteed to put it in a bad mood, especially if it is rabid.  I should know, I was raised by weasels*.

Mum and Dad

     If you are doing this naked then more fool you, because weasels have extremely sharp teeth, not to mention claws.  Conrad bets the NWJ will last mere seconds, if even that long.

     The alternative option is that of weasels not wearing any clothes, performing prestidigitation themselves, a pretty tricky task if you don't possess mutually opposable digits.  Here, of course - obviously! - we veer into cartoon territory, where Disney and others - Hanna Barbera I am glaring at you with ferocious intensity - put about the notion that animals have to be clothed.  Art!

Tufty is the squirrel.  Not sure of the weasel's name.

     Please note that the above are STOLIDLY UN-PERVERSE BRITISH CARTOON CHARACTERS who wear clothing BELO

W the waist, unlike that pervert Winnie the Pooh, whom we risk breaching our SFW status by illustrating, but - go ahead, Art - children, you should probably shut your eyes now.

Winnie with his BALLOON OF DRUG GASSES

     

     Possibly.  What do you bet that there's nitrogen dioxide in there and not helium?  Inhalation to become freaky instead of merely squeaky.

     ANYWAY allow Conrad to put forward The Weasel As Noble Savage -

A role model for the ages

     After all that I think my conclusion is a bit weak, since I cannot find any pictures of weasels juggling.  O well.  Maybe tomorrow.   

     Motley!  Begin the juggling of those educational slate-supports as used in the classroom in Victorian times.

Easels.  Close enough.

When The Humans Rock

If you recognise the allusion to Gary Numan, have half a brownie point.  For this item is nothing to do with music, and everything to do with ROCK LIGHTHOUSE CONSTRUCTION thank you very much.  Today we focus our attention on the Bell Rock Lighthouse, as mentioned in Tom Nancollas's "Seashaken Houses", and which we may very well have covered in the past.  If so, prepare for a recap.  Art!

     The Bell Rock was built at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, being completed in 1810, which means that the work was done by hand, rather than being assisted by steam or internal combustion engines.  The 'window' for construction was extremely limited, being carried out when tides were at their lowest, leading to the construction of a wooden adjunct that served as temporary lighthouse, accommodation, stores and forge.  Art!

     On land, such a construction wouldn't have merited much attention.  Situated eleven miles out to sea, on an outcrop barely visible most of the time, and attended by the vilest of weather, the Bell Rock Lighthouse became something of a cause celebre, certainly in Scotland.  The methodology and craftsmanship were so exemplary that, two hundred years later, it is still perfectly functional.  How much of our modern world now extant will be able to say that in 2221?

Quick!  Invite the British to invade**!

Yes, Conrad Is STILL Angry

Let me add, more angry than usual.  My default state is "Irked", occasionally moving over into "Peeved".  Today, after reviewing Codeword solutions, I have decided I am, indeed, angry.  Let the traducement begin!

"SZYGY": Actually this is a complete fiction, I've never come across this as a solution, most probably because the compilers have never encountered it, as they are not astronomers.  For Your Information, it refers to at least three heavenly bodies aligned along a common axis, and is a major plot point in a Heinlein juvenile (possibly "Farmer In The Sky") and I seem to recall a Fred Pohl story or novel with this as a central tenet.  Art!

Told you.

"LINO":  What?  By this word, are you by any chance referring to that plastic flooring product which the civilised world knows as 'Linoleum'?  Conrad is unsure if this is a name familiar only to those blessed enough to live within the boundaries of This Sceptred Isle, but you cannot tell me that an abbreviation of said name is valid.  This is verging on Ocker slang which abbreviates everything and sticks an "O" on the end.  Art!

Linoleum wrestling.  The next Olympic sport?

"FONDU":  Codeword, I am not fond of you.  I checked in my Collins Concise and it is spelt "FONDUE".  FONDUE FONDUE FONDUE!  Really, if you're going to include exotic foreign phrases, at least do me the courtesy of GETTING IT RIGHT.  From the Swiss, don't you know, which in turns comes from the French for 'melted' (that is, 'Fondu').  Art!

A fondue set

     If only it were bigger.  Then we could put the compilers in there.  Er - only metaphorically.  Only by analogy.  Not in real life.  No, nobody would want to see their scalded bodies slowly slipping beneath the broiling surface, shrieking as they went, nobody willing to lift a finger to help them as horribly hot cheese sauce drags them down and parboils them until

     ANYWAY I caught you out, compilers, so hard cheese.  

Finally -

I think we are done for tonight.  Better get down and see to that laundry.  Hmmm.  I bet Jim Morrison never had to deal with wet soggy socks and tee-shirts.

*  RABID weasels, to boot.

**  This is probably a matte.  Just so we're clear.

A Quick Look Astern

For Lo! It Is the 77th Anniversary Of D-Day

And Your Humble Scribe needs to get another batch of laundry in, manage a pseudo-Bigos stew, commit to at least the start of tomorrow's blog and, most importantly, WATCH "THE LONGEST DAY".  This is an unusual military commemoration in This Sceptred Isle, since we are rather fond of concentrating on failures, not victories.  Because we are so understated and modest about stuff, before you ask.  Anyway, let us have a picture of that day's only VC. Art!

CSM Stan Hollis.  Bad teeth, good aim.

     As a Company Sergeant Major, Stan would have risen up the ranks to be the effective second in command of his company, having managed to collect four wounds along the way.  We need not go into his history here, because this  Intro is supposed to be only a couple of paragraphs long, but he had to beat journalists away from him with a barbed-wire stick to stop them writing his biography - some people take "understated and modest" very seriously.  You tend to get this kind of attention when you win a VC and live to tell the tale.

     And after being so uncharacteristically serious, let the nonsensical verbiage commence!

2020

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2020/06/we-totally-rok-it.html

2019

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2019/06/sorry-more-sinful-pride.html

2018

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2018/06/ive-been-so-mean-to-astatine.html

2017

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2017/06/im-toying-with-you.html

2016

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2016/06/steve-youre-naive.html

2015

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2015/06/sixteen-thirty-one.html

2014

https://comsatangel2002.blogspot.com/2014/06/blue-skies-and-sunshine-conrad-is-very.html

Warily Dipping A Talon In Political Waters

Kind Of

You needn't worry that Conrad is going to rip off his human camouflage and reveal his membership of an alien dictatorship from Theta Reticuli Britain First, but you will need to put up with some references to recent political history over in South Canada.  There was an election over there last November, and the incumbent - whom we will anonymise as Dee Tee - lost.  Since having to move out of the White House (so-called after we Brits burned down it's predecessor), he has been twiddling his thumbs, rather, especially as he has no access to social media any more.

Come home to a real fire - let the British invade you!

     That's a whole other story in itself.  Suffice to say that Dee decided to create a blog, in order to promote his stories, the likes of which the world has never seen before - at least according to the hype before it got established.

      Ah yes.  About that.  Art?

Ignore the reflections!  Ignore the reflections!

     There you have some of the traffic stats and global audience for BOOJUM!  Conrad can assure you that these figures did not develop overnight; it's taken years to get to this level of audience visits, by virtue of ceaseless posting and <modest shrug> endless creativity.  You can peruse seven years of back posts if you care to take the bother, in pursuit of which I shall be posting links later this evening.

     Dee's blog didn't last a month.  Obviously his traffic was a lot higher than mine, which comes of being a political figure frequently in the limelight, yet it was still infinitesimal compared to his old social media tallies.  That's the thing about a blog - it takes time, effort and patience to build an audience*.  I'd say you need at least six months to see if things are advanced enough in terms of popularity before making a decision to pull the plug.

                                                        "Should BOOJUM! continue?"

"YES!"

     It seems Dee lacked either the work ethic or patience, or spent too much time playing Dungeons And Dragons, to put a proper effort in.  Also, would you like to see what he wrote?  Tough.  The whole blog has been deleted, not archived.

     WHAT!

     Do you see BOOJUM! deleting ANYTHING?  No!  Absolutely not!  I like people to be able to see what poison pearls of perfect prose I've posted in the past, not to mention needing to check if I've posted about any particular subject before (memory not being what it used to, you know, old age and all that).  One would almost, very nearly, reasonably suspect Dee was embarrassed about the fruits of his mental labours.  Conrad, however, has no shame and there's no question about this post or any other being deleted**.

     So - give credit to the bloggers of the world, since we work hard for our scant rewards.

"Typically, Conrad's book had over 500 pages."

This Is Going Two Bore You

NO THAT IS NOT A SPELLING MISTAKE IT IS AN HILARIOUS PUN!  <ahem> Yes, so Conrad was idly looking at thumbnails on Youtube when he caught sight of one by "Forgotten Weapons", about a "2 Bore Rifle".

     Erk.

     For those of you out there not intimately familiar with guns, shotguns are classed in terms of their 'bore', that is, how wide their muzzle is.  The smaller the bore, the bigger the gun, counter-intuitively.  Art!

     This was explained to me decades ago and made as little sense then as now.  To determine the bore of a shotgun, take one pound of lead. How many pieces in spherical form do you have to divide it into until one will fit into the barrel?  That's the bore.  Most shotguns are 12-bore, with lower bores being uncommon.  So - a 2 bore?  That's got to be enormous!  Art!

The beast in question

This thing was built to order for a customer.  It weighs 44 pounds and if you had no ammunition left you could club the charging rhino to death with it.  Art!

     Ammunition comparison.  That at top is a 0.50 Browning round, the biggest bullet in the South Canadian arsenal.  Below it is a 4 bore round, and below that the 2 bore round.  Heck, if you lacked the rifle you could club that rhino to death with the round alone.  Art!

     Ian, experienced armourer that he is, could only hold the gun in this position for less than a second thanks to the weight and balance.  One feels the firer would need to be built more along the lines of Conrad for this to work.  I am unsure if there are any videos of this monster being fired; I may look for them.

Heath Robinson

I've got it down in my notebook so we have to at least brush the subject.  HR got typecast as the illustrator of countless exotic devices held together with string and actioned by pulleys, performing basic tasks in the most convoluted way***.  So, let us have one of his inventions to the fore.  Art!

Kenwood Spiralizer Prototype?

     Your Humble Scribe wonders what speed that turntable is revolving at, because at the probable 78 r.p.m. yonder potato is going to be peeled in seconds. I'm surprised it doesn't have a shute and trap to collect the peelings.  Note that down for the Mark II, HR.

Finally -

I bet you were thinking "Oh we've gotten through a whole blog post without any mention of Conrad's blood pressure and Codeword solutions, lucky us." HAH how wrong you are!  If I've written them down you can jolly well suffer experience the awe and mystery th - no, hang on, that was "The Outer Limits", wasn't it? <sighs> O what it is to be old and confused and old and conf - er - quite.

"CREDO":  Of course - obviously! - it comes from Latin, and means "I believe" WELL I DON'T BELIEVE IT!  ARE WE ALL CLASSICAL SCHOLARS NOW OR WHAT?  and no, you don't get a picture.  I'm too angry for pictures.

"WHEREBY":  Are you serious?  This is the kind of language you'd expect to hear in the judge's summing-up at the Old Bailey, or a personal memoir from 1768 by an engineer constructing a bridge.  You simply would NOT expect to hear it in conversation today, still less in print.  Art!

Close enough

"SIXTEENTH": <sound of teeth being ground ferociously> this is BARELY acceptable.  Barely.  Yes it's English, and you might VERY OCCASIONALLY hear or see it in use, but - really!  The only example Your Humble Scribe can think of is a one-sixteenth drill bit, which is just the right size for clearing any sprue from inside the road wheels on Airfix tanks, and you can only admit that's a niche use and no mistake.  Art!

*  A unique weltanschaung also helps.

**  Despite what UNIT or Spectrum have to say.

***  I like him already!

Wave Hello

I Know, I Know - 

We have inverted the convention, haven't we?  Well get used to it, because that's how we roll around here.  Okay, we've been dealing with the ocean frequently of late, and I would now like to introduce an artwork from farthest Japan on the subject matter in question.  Art!

By Hokusai

     This iconic Japanese woodprint is known as "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa", created about 1830, and shows three fishing boats in peril within sight of Mount Fuji in the background.  There is speculation about exactly what kind of wave this is, with the consensus being a 'rogue wave'; that is to say, a freakishly large wave of no predictable origin, coming out of nowhere very unexpectedly.

     Which is an introduction to another form of artwork considerably more modern in conception.  Art!

     Yes, this is a Lego rendering of the same.  Unlike many Lego sculptures, I have found quite the informative website about this one.  It was constructed by Jumpei Mitsui, in either late 2020 or early 2021.  It consists of 50,000 bricks - I know you like details such as this - and was preceded by careful study of wave motions and a detailed sketching.  It took our protagonist 500 hours to complete the whole thing, which means he must have been working solo.  Art!

     I hope he has a cushion under his knees, Lego corners are extremely unforgiving.  The whole thing is about five feet across, and we have an alternate angle on it.  Art!

     It could only be improved by having the sea move up and down, and the boats crawling along the ocean's briny deeps.  Can't see that happening any decade soon.

     SO!  There you have another in one of BOOJUM!s occasional visits to Lego sculptures, because it's always interesting to see how hard other people work in the pursuit of an artistic vision.  Whereas we - well, we exist at roughly the artistic level of a trilobite.

(makes trilobite noises)

     Conrad is here minded of the band Seventh Wave, a prog outfit around for a few years in the Seventies, and whose album "Psi-Fi" he once had, with the stand-out track "Star Palace Of The Sombre Warrior", which makes as little sense as you'd expect.  If Art will exert himself -

Shades of Hokusai

     Motley!  Break out the Blood-Flavoured surfboards, and let us go Shark Surfing!

Before I Forget

Your Humble Scribe set this one up earlier, and then forgot about it, because he was so busy being awesomely creative in other ways, and because I'd not had my eleven o'clock gin coffee.  Eleven o'clock coffee.  Art!

     It made me snigger.  In case you were unaware, having either been living atop a pole in the Gobi Desert for the past fifty-five years, or down in a Marine Submersible Environment - hang on, do they exist yet?  ignore that one -  ANYWAY in that cult series "Starry Trex" (I think, the font is a bit confusing) you had the starship 'Enterprise' beetling about the galaxy, amongst whose crew were the Security members, who wore Red Shirts.  If ever an away-team convened with members of Security, they were inevitably the ones who got scragged.  Art!

I know, I know, he's all red.  You get the point.

     

Kirky feeling both smug and safe.  Redshirts considerably less so.

     I don't need to do a reverse-image search to be able to tell you that the artwork here is by the incomparable Mike Noble, and comes from the pages of "TV 21" comic, where it had supplanted the stories about Captain Scarlet.  In fact we might be able to - O you're already awake, Art?  Splendid -

Star Trek - where the calamari fights back

"Terry Talks Movies"

Indeed he does, and since he and Conrad's taste in movies appear to chime, Your Humble Scribe has been watching several of his Youtube videos.  Terry appears to be about as long in the tooth as Your Humble Scribe, which is to say brushing the edges of middle age, and which also means we've probably watched the same films and television programs in our early years.

     But not all the same.  Thus, when he posted a video of another 5 'Hidden Gems', Conrad checked it out.  I've seen "Sapphire And Steel"* and "Kolchak", but what's this "M.A.N.T.I.S"?  Art!

     The acronym stands for <ahem> "Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interactive System", which is a variety of super-exoskeleton that gave the black hero incredible speed, strength and dexterity, enabling him to fight crime as a superhero.  Oddly enough I watched this video the day after putting up a picture of another, considerably less super exoskeleton as a book cover.  Art!

     M.A.N.T.I.S. only lasted one season, and since viewing figures weren't that great they re-jigged it halfway through, throwing in all sorts of nonsense.  There's probably some flying monkeys in there, too, courtesy Wayne's butt.  However, if Terry thinks it worth a shot Your Humble Scribe may possibly pick it up some enchanted evening when he returns to Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell.

Still Seething After All These Jeers

Yes!  Conrad emerged from his pit this morning with enough time to tackle the three Codewords in last weekend's M.E.N., banging them all out in an hour, which also includes sorting out the laundry and drinking tea.  Who says men can't multi-task!  Inevitably they stretch the unwritten rules to breaking-point.  I shan't go into "ORTHODOX" or "ORTHODOXY" as those have already been raged about.  No, let us go straight to -

"AGAVE":  Say what?  At first I thought I'd gotten "OGIVE" wrong, until a quick look in my Collins Concise revealed the truth.  It's a plant, native to tropical America, with elongated flower stalks rising from large, succulent leaves.  Some species are used to create sisal.

     WHAT ARE WE EXOTIC BOTANISTS NOW!

Agave with puny human for scale

"FATWA":  Fatwa?  Fatwa! I'll give you fatuous - how the devil are we to keep track of imported foreign words into ENGLISH.  As evinced by the next word, which is -

"AMIGO":  ARE YOU DOG BUNS SERIOUS? Do you think that Spanish Codeword compilers include "FRIEND" in their solutions?  NO THEY DO NOT!

Close enough

     I have more - O! so much more - but my blood pressure won't take any more, so I shall call it quits for tonight.  Count on more Frothing Nitric Ire tomorrow, mind.

*  Which was WAY TOO CREEPY for children's television.